Nixie selfie snapping drone wins Intel’s Make It Wearable challenge

The winner of Intel's wearable competition, the Make It Wearable challenge, has been announced, and the grand prize was scooped by Nixie.

Nixie hit the headlines in late September, and it's a very novel idea for a mini-quad-copter wearable with a camera that can be strapped to your wrist. You can then get it to unfold its blades, take off and snap selfies from the air, before returning to your arm (check the video here to see it in action).

Nixie's developers get a $500,000 (£310,000) prize for the win, which should go a fair way towards making the project a reality – although given the current prototype shown a couple of months back, there's still some way to go.

Second place was taken by Open Bionics, which bagged $200,000 (£125,000) for using low-cost 3D printing and scanning to deliver customised products to amputees for under a grand.

The third prize of $100,000 (£63,000) went to ProGlove, a glove described as a "sensor-based wearable production tool" designed to help those working on assembly lines in factories. The idea is that it helps workers perform tasks more ergonomically and efficiently, combining multiple instruments into the glove.

Wearables are set to explode shortly – or at least fitness gadgets are predicted to take off big time this Christmas, followed by smartwatches next year (according to analysts). We can likely expect to see more diverse offerings like these prize winners coming along, too...